Cloud Services Provider CenterBeam Selects HP to Support Customer Demand

HP Converged Infrastructure, cloud-ready solutions enable CloudAgile partner to expand offerings

Topics:Cloud, Converged Infrastructure

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP today announced that cloud services provider CenterBeam has selected HP Converged Infrastructure to support the increased capacity demands of its cloud service offerings and joined the HP CloudAgile Program.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based CenterBeam provides midsize businesses with enterprise-class cloud computing services, including hosted customer relationship management (CRM), hosted collaboration, virtual data center services and data storage management.

The rapid expansion of the cloud services market required CenterBeam to replace its EMC-based infrastructure, including EMC CLARiiON storage systems, to support significant customer data growth.

After evaluating solutions from Dell and EMC, CenterBeam selected HP VirtualSystem, including HP 3PAR storage and HP ProLiant BL460c G7 server blades, as the backbone for its hosted platform.

Migrating to HP 3PAR F400 Storage and HP VirtualSystem solutions has enabled CenterBeam to boost its storage throughput tenfold.⁽¹⁾ CenterBeam’s new infrastructure also enables its customers to store large amounts of infrequently used data to maintain high performance of mission-critical applications.

HP VirtualSystem provides CenterBeam a rapid path to agile and efficient virtualized application solutions. Its balanced architecture eliminates performance bottlenecks, while integrated management simplifies deployment and security across physical and virtual environments.

CenterBeam was able to reduce overall storage costs by more than 50 percent⁽²⁾ using HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization software, which automatically moves infrequently used data from expensive Fibre Channel and flash drives to affordable SATA drives.

In addition, CenterBeam decreased storage administration by 60 percent⁽²⁾ with thin provisioning and a simplified management interface for seamless growth of its Microsoft® Exchange platform – without downtime. Thin provisioning technologies also provide the flexibility to purchase and provision disk capacity as needed.

“Exploding data growth is forcing our customers to find cost-effective options that increase capacity while maintaining performance levels of mission-critical applications,” said Shahin Pirooz, executive vice president and chief technology officer, CenterBeam. “The functionality and scalability of HP 3PAR systems enable us to offer affordable, flexible cloud storage services to our customers, while creating a unique competitive advantage for CenterBeam in the market.”

HP CloudAgile provides hosting, managed and cloud-based services

CenterBeam also has partnered with HP in the HP CloudAgile Program, which enables service providers to expand offerings with services built on HP 3PAR and HP VirtualSystem.

Leveraging HP technology, the HP CloudAgile Program offers service providers direct access to HP’s global sales force as well as the worldwide network of channel partners to extend their sales reach, expand their portfolio of service offerings and accelerate their time to market.

HP’s premier client event, HP Discover, takes place June 4-7 in Las Vegas.

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⁽¹⁾ According to SPC-1 results available at www.storageperformance.org.

⁽²⁾ Based on client results.

Supplier of the Year

News release from GE:

21 February 2012

GE Energy’s Industrial Solutions Business Named Gexpro’s 2011 North America Supplier of the Year

 

PLAINVILLE, Conn. — Feb. 21, 2012 — GE Energy’s (NYSE: GE) Industrial Solutions business has received the prestigious 2011 North America Supplier of the Year award from Gexpro, a part of Rexel Holdings, U.S.A. The award, one of four presented, was announced recently at the Gexpro Leadership Conference in Phoenix, Ariz.

“GE Energy’s Industrial Solutions business was clearly focused on innovation, marketing, services and solutions with Gexpro,” said Scott King, vice president of sourcing and inventory for Gexpro. “They successfully drove engagement and leadership that netted revenue growth for all five Gexpro divisions.”

Many factors and metrics determine which Gexpro vendor receives the Supplier of the Year award. Industrial Solutions excelled in the following areas:

• Dedicated resource investments focused on Gexpro growth of Industrial Solutions products.
• More than 10 percent revenue growth versus 2010 results.
• Deeper collaboration across every Gexpro division with a strong focus on sales growth, operations improvements and trade area strategies.
• Improved field sales leadership engagement from GE regional sales leaders, sales directors and account managers across all five Gexpro divisions.
• Highly effective sales and marketing programs created specifically for Gexpro.
• Relationship builders, training resources and marketing tools: the Gexpro-dedicated GE Connections quarterly newsletter and The GE Source, a section of GE-exclusive pages within Gexpro’s quarterly intranet.
• GE’s overall tenacity for higher engagement and performance with Gexpro across all functions.

“Gexpro is a foundation distributor with GE Energy, and our mutual success depends on working together to solve challenges and deliver results for both teams as we have done for more than a century,” said Gary Arnott, North America sales executive for Industrial Solutions. “GE has resources, marketing and sales dedicated to help Gexpro be more successful and drive growth. Together, we are able to provide solutions to jointly meet our customers’ many challenges and help them save money.”

Gexpro, headquartered in Shelton, Conn., and a part of Rexel Holdings, U.S.A., serves the construction, commercial, industrial and original equipment manufacturer markets with more than 2,500 professionals in more than 150 locations around the globe. Gexpro’s Answer-Based Sourcing and Active 8 Energy Solutions bundle the electrical supplies its customers need with services and solutions to add value, improve performance and save money on every project. By combining productivity tools, large local inventories and dedicated specialists, Gexpro leads the industry in delivering on customer needs and building on competitive advantages for its customers.

The Real Way to Build a Network

The February 6, 2012 issue of FORTUNE magazine contains an article with the above title.  The article is an excerpt of a book by Reid Hoffman (partner at Greylock and founder and executive chairman at LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha (award-winning entrepreneur and author).  Just the first five paragraphs, which appear below, contain considerable wisdom.  Hoffman's and Casnocha's book is entitled, "The Start-Up of You."

Many people are turned off by the topic of networking.  They think it’s slimy, inauthentic.  Picture the consummate networker: a high-energy fast talker who collects as many business cards as he can and attends mixers sporting slicked-back hair.  Or the overambitious college kid who frantically e-mails alumni, schmoozes with the board of trustees, and adds anyone he’s ever met as an online friend.  Such people are drunk on networking Kool-Aid – and are looking at a potentially nasty hangover.

Luckily, building your network doesn’t have to be like that.  Old-school networkers are transactional.  They pursue relationships thinking solely about what other people can do for them.  Relationship builders, on the other hand, try to help others first.  They don’t keep score.  And they prioritize high-quality relationships over a large number of connections.

Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at least two abilities.  The first is seeing the world from another person’s perspective.  No one knows that better than the skilled entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurs succeed when they make stuff people will pay money for – and that means understanding what’s going on in the heads of customers.  Likewise, in relationships it’s only when you put yourself in the other person’s shoes that you begin to develop an honest connection.

The second ability is being able to think about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.  We’re not suggesting that you be so saintly that a self-interested thought never crosses your mind.  What we’re saying is that your first move should always be to help.  A study on negotiation found that a key difference between skilled and average negotiators was the time spent searching for shared interests and asking questions of the other person.

Follow that model.  Start with a friendly gesture and genuinely mean it.  Dale Carnegie’s classic book on relationships, despite all its wisdom, has the unfortunate title How to Win Friends and Influence People.  This makes Carnegie widely misunderstood.  You don’t “win” a friend.  A friend is not an asset you own; a friend is an ally, a collaborator.  When you can tell that someone is attempting sincerity, it leaves you cold.  It is like the feeling you have when someone calls you by your first name repeatedly in conversation.  Novelist Jonathan Franzen gets it right when he says inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.